Reading time: 2 mins Every little helps. It’s a reasonable maxim to live your life by; save a little money when you can, eat a little less of the bad things and exercise a little more than you do to stay fit and healthy, make a little gesture to brighten the day of a stranger, and so on and…
Reading time: 3 mins I’m on my way to work. I step off the bus and head for the same location as I have these past four years. As I enter, if she’s working, Alice says hi and takes my precious travel mug from me, and starts to prepare my … wait for it, large skinny, sugar-free vanilla, latte.…
Reading time: 2 mins “In the greenhouse, my grandfather and me. Smells of summer.” – Martin Stephenson. Is it the gentle aroma you get after a warm summer shower on dry soil? (Also known as Petrichor). Is it the subtle waft of a perfume from a passerby that transports you to forgotten time and place? Is it the smell…
Reading time: < 1 min A blue desk, with a flip up lid, painted red in a later life, sitting there looking out through warbled glass. The smell of a warm wet dog from the back of the car. Sitting at the top of the stairs whilst my parents and friends talked and laughed late into the night. My blanket,…
Reading time: 3 mins A couple of years ago I sat down at my desk. It was the first day of a dark November and my intention was to write 50,000 words of a new novel, my first. Having written posts for this blog for several years, and increasingly looked to improve the quality of the writing it was…
Reading time: 4 mins I grew up in a house that always had the TV on. My Mum knitted, professionally, and the TV was the back drop to that. As she was working, she preferred things that she maybe didn’t have to pay close attention to, so Saturday afternoon movies became a staple, as did cricket and Formula One,…